


all i know is no one dies (i'm still confusing love with need)

by asphaltworld



Category: Re-Animator (Movies)
Genre: Injury, M/M, Restraints, Trans Herbert West, ableist attitudes, from dan's POV so it's not featured heavily but You Know...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:20:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24953683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asphaltworld/pseuds/asphaltworld
Summary: When they’re back in Arkham after braving the battlefields, nested in their own little hellhole next to the cemetery, they settle back into routine like nothing ever happened.“My creatures hated me,” Herbert says.“Well, yeah,” says Dan.Herbert copes with post-Bride injuries less-than-gracefully.
Relationships: Daniel Cain/Herbert West
Comments: 4
Kudos: 69





	all i know is no one dies (i'm still confusing love with need)

**Author's Note:**

> Dan tries to take care of Herbert, who takes to it like a cat takes to water.
> 
> Song title from Gary Numan's Metal, a song with real Herbert West vibes. Numan has spoken a lot about how his Asperger's affects his songwriting and lyrics, which are largely about feeling alienated from people's social rituals.

Out in the tents where they do their work, Dan is always hot. Sometimes he misses the cold New England nights. They were crisp, you know? The smell of wet leaves or fresh snow, a warm girl’s hand on his arm, her perfume scenting the air around him. But instead, he’s here with Herbert, experimenting on the vast fields of freshly dead you can find in a civil war. 

Right now, though, he just feels cold. He’s sweating through his shirt, and it’s wet with his own warm blood, but he’s shivering regardless. 

“You’re going to be okay, Dan,” West says, his eyes fixed unflinchingly on the messy wound. It’s not as reassuring as Herbert probably thinks it is. 

“Why don’t I believe you?” Dan tries to say before he blacks out. But he is okay. Herbert was right, and he lives to see another day. He even gets a job in Arkham, and a room in that strange house no one ever wanted to rent before.

\---

Dan used to do really well with women, but now it’s a constant battle to keep them away from the basement, from Herbert, from obsessive fucking local detectives.

Herbert practically makes a game of it. Every woman who shows up in Dan’s life runs screaming for the hills. Dan gets to hold the girl as she dies, or hold the girl as she runs away, but he drops everything and comes right away whenever West calls for him. He’s not sure why he does it. It makes him angry and he resents Herbert for it. But he can’t stay away; the pull is too strong. 

Herbert knows it, too. 

\---

When they’re back in Arkham, nested in their own little hellhole next to the cemetery, they settle back into routine like nothing ever happened. 

The whole Bride thing goes south, even faster than Dan thought it would. He hoped, vainly, that there would be maybe a few days before the woman would lose it and Megan’s heart would prove to be wasted one final time. Deep down, it was obvious to him that it wouldn’t last. Herbert’s the optimist of the two of them. He always thinks it’s going to work.

The Bride went straight to Dan, just like girls always do. He wonders if that’s the part that bothers West, or if it’s not getting credit for his own work. He’d looked confused. He said, “I made you,” and it wasn’t in the acid tone of voice he uses on doctors he thinks are beneath him (all of them) or rude authority figures (most of them). He had sounded surprised. 

Herbert took a real beating that night, but he lived. His small body is always being thrown around by the re-animated subjects, by bullying professionals, even Dan. He should either learn how to fight or stop making enemies. When he was a kid his life was probably hell. Probably as strange and uncompromising then as he is now.

Even after getting tossed through the air and landing hard, Herbert moved fast, darting forward with precision and making decisive movements. It’s surprising, given his reputation as totally mentally focused, spending all his time with books. He must be strong.

He wasn’t precious about his injuries, just reached out a hand to Dan when he finally went back inside to check out the basement. Francesca fled when she realized Dan wasn’t going to leave the place behind, after one last confused kiss.

Dan frees him from under the debris and plaster dust: the remains of their little kingdom. They stagger up the front porch, Dan carrying most of Herbert’s scant body weight. 

Herbert coughs, then he laughs. 

“Reminds me... of Peru,” he mutters. 

“What? Why?”

“When you were injured.”

“I don’t remember a damn thing after I was shot,” Dan says. Except for Herbert reassuring him.

“I had to try and hold you up. Like this.” He pauses and catches his breath. “Obviously it was a challenge. You big neanderthal.”

“Jesus.”

Herbert is essentially draped over him, dusty and warm. Dan’s a big guy, he knows, but he’s tired too. So he drops him clumsily on their tattered old couch. Herbert groans. 

“Do you need to go to the hospital?”

“No. I’m fine here. Thank you.” Herbert doesn’t look good, but Dan doesn’t want to deal with the questions. He has to assume that the man knows his own body and values his own life enough that he’ll ask for help when he needs it.

Dan starts up the stairs to his bedroom before shouting, “I’m going to bed.” Herbert doesn’t say anything in response, so he lets himself fall asleep. 

He wakes up early the next morning, way earlier than usual. He goes downstairs and Herbert is still lying on the couch. Dan takes it in. His small body, thin and compact. Narrow hips clothed in black. He hopes he’s still alive.

“Hey, Herbert,” he says.

Nothing.

“Herbert.”

“Herbert.”

“West!”

At that, he launches into an upright position, like a wind-up toy. Herbert’s breathing hard, his chest moving fast under his torn, bloody, filthy shirt. His hair is a mess and he doesn’t look like himself. Vulnerable and disheveled, like this, he’s unrecognizable. 

“Christ,” he says under his breath, then, “Dan, would you help me get to my room? I need to change.”

\---

He grabs a crisp shirt and pants from the closet, a fresh pair of socks, and deposits them all on the bed where Herbert can reach easily. 

The room smells like disinfectant and Irish Spring. 

“You don’t have anything more comfortable to wear?” Dan asks.

“No.” 

Dan turns away to let Herbert dress, but stays in the room in case he falls or needs help.

“I’m decent.”

Dan turns and sees Herbert’s shirt looking rumpled, his tie left on the bed. 

“I can help you fix...” Dan gestures.

“That’s alright.”

“I thought you liked looking neat.”

“I like making myself neat. Did you make any food?”

\---

Dan brings him a plate of eggs. He looks better afterward. Pale and bloodless in the face as ever, but his eyes are sharper. He still doesn’t move much. 

Dan leaves for work. Herbert is a trained doctor, and a man so driven to survive he’s outlived more than one undead mob set on killing him. Their jobs are important and at least one of them has to keep theirs, so he has to go. He’s not sure how well Herbert will recover, what he’ll be able to do when he does, so he at least has to remain in good standing at his own job. It won’t do for people to learn he and West have been involved in yet another catastrophe. 

He lasts until lunch before he begs off work on the grounds of an unspecified family emergency and he tears home, tires squealing obnoxiously in a way Herbert would mock. He finds Herbert sitting calmly on the couch flipping through his favorite medical book, in all its full-color glossy glory. He’s eating hot sauce on saltine crackers, a combination that makes Dan cringe. 

“Got some good nutrition there, Dr. West?” 

“Hmm?”

“You can ask me for help, you know.” Herbert’s face shutters closed and immediately he knows it was the wrong thing to say, but he can’t take it back. 

Herbert slams the book shut. “When have I ever needed your help?”

This is laughable, considering Herbert practically gets down on his knees for Dan on a weekly basis, trying to get him to move a body or cover his ass with an alibi. Sometimes he thinks Herbert’s about to make an offer, crossing over from ostensibly nonsexual touch into something else, but he never actually does it. 

“Forget I asked. Enjoy yourself in there.”

He stops in the kitchen, though, and decides to leave a sandwich out for Herbert. It’s gone by the time he gets home, of course. 

\---

Things go on like this for a week or two. Dan goes out into the world, West stays in his room. He doesn’t really know what Herbert’s doing with his time, other than probably planning something horrible. 

Men end up mysteriously dead around Herbert. That’s just how it goes. And each time, Herbert tells him shitty, unconvincing lies to try and communicate that he’s safe to be around. Dan’s illusions on his safety were shattered long ago. But Herbert persists. That’s not all I am, he tells Dan, in so many words. He wants Dan not to think of him as a killer. It’s all so exhausting. He doesn’t know how Herbert does it. Probably has a lot to do with the reagent.

“Let’s have dinner together,” Herbert says one evening when Dan gets home. He’s waiting on the couch this time.

“Sure,” Dan says, knowing it really just means that he’s going to make dinner for the both of them. It’s enough of a novelty that he wants to agree. 

In their tiny kitchen, he bakes fish and steams broccoli. He chops vegetables and seasons the fish happily; it calms him after a day of difficult choices at the hospital. He’s been on a health kick since he met Herbert. The man is his own memento mori, a constant reminder of the harsh realities of the grave, so he avoids red meat and fried food.

He’s sitting down to take his first bite when Herbert starts talking.

“My creatures hated me,” Herbert says.

“Well, yeah,” says Dan. He might’ve cooked the broccoli for too long. It’s a little soft. 

“I was surprised they could, after what I gave to them. But more importantly, this proves that they have coherent thoughts. They conspired against me. That means they have thought, and powers of observation. And the ability to use tools? I'm getting closer.” He has that look in his eyes, glazed over and detached from the scene at hand.

Dan sets his fork down. “Herbert. If you haven’t realized by now, you ought to: this will kill you.”

Herbert rolls his eyes and keeps eating. 

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep my work up at the pace I was at before,” he says.

“Take a break, then. Did you call the hospital yet?” Dan says, trying to steer the conversation back to normalcy. 

“They’re probably hoping I’m dead.”

“I told them you’re injured.”

“Damn it, Dan. I don’t make a habit of telling my coworkers every little detail of my personal life.”

“What? I wanted you to keep your job. Don’t you want tissue samples? A paycheck?”

Herbert ignores him, tries to stab his fork into a piece of fish as it slips around his plate.

“You always ignore me when it’s convenient for you.” 

“This food is delicious, Daniel,” Herbert says, dripping with sarcasm. He’s gripping the fork hard, and it tenses the muscle in his forearm, exposed where his shirtsleeves are rolled up. “You must have worked very hard on this to get it so...” He lets it slide off his fork.

Dan throws his fork down. “Herbert, if you don’t like what I make, you can fend for yourself. I hear that saltine crackers are a great source of fucking iron. Perfect for a man recovering from having a building collapse on him.”

Herbert looks entirely unremorseful. He’s still smiling to himself over his own joke.

Dan wants, he realizes, to pull him along by his thin black tie. To shove him into their disintegrating couch and pull his clothes off. Herbert always makes him feel naked; the least he can do is return the favor and let Dan see him without clothes. He shuts his eyes instead, so they won’t stray to Herbert’s sweaty chest clad in white shirt. Even at his most infuriating, Dan _wants_ him, obsessively. 

“My left leg has been bothering me,” Herbert says suddenly. “I wonder what if it would be possible to replace it. With the help of the reagent, of course.”

Dan lets out a long, frustrated sigh after a minute of trying to think of something to say and failing, and instead applies himself to eating his dinner.

“You’re not serious. You can’t experiment on yourself, Herbert.”

He says, “I’ve done it with the reagent and that was an incredible success.” The carnage of the past year flashes before Dan’s eyes. But he won’t argue it.

“Because you think you’re invincible.”

Herbert gets a strange little smile on his face and says, “I know my body’s limits more than you can even imagine.”

“I can imagine it, all right,” Dan mutters.

Herbert looks even more smug than usual. He doesn’t let Dan help him to the couch, but he does let Dan sit down next to him. It’s made up as a bed, with a dusty old comforter and a few couch cushions piled at one end. 

They sit and read together in a strangely domestic scene. Herbert’s not physically capable of going out and hunting down specimens to fuck with, and Dan’s not especially willing to indulge him at the moment. They’re also low on reagent for the time being. Herbert’s been making some noise about seeking out reptile dealers, but seemingly nothing has come to pass. 

“Dan, look at this,” Herbert says, chuckling. “This paper references Dr. Graves, from the hospital. The title says it’s about creationism. I always knew he was an idiot.”

Herbert is in his element here, and Dan’s reading the paper, the TV on in the background. This is his life, and it’s all so normal it’s wigging him out. There are no corpses lurking, no looming medical figures to do battle with. It’s just Dan and his roommate enjoying an evening together.

It’s so normal it has Dan thinking about other things, like why he’s a thirty-year-old doctor with a roommate, for God’s sake, living on the edge of town like a hermit. He’s supposed to be settling down. Maybe buying a house of his own, having a family to fill it up with.

This feels comfortable, though. Dan’s not entirely sure he could turn his back on Herbert very easily, knowing what he knows. 

So he settles further into the couch and looks over Herbert’s shoulder at the medical journal, laughing with him.

\----

Dan needs to make a phone call, but his mind goes blank on the name and number and what he’s supposed to say when he hears Herbert talking on the other line, giving instructions no doubt. He sounds satisfied, the way he only does when he’s calling the shots. 

Herbert never uses the phone. Why would he use the phone at home? There’s no one for him to call, especially not now when he’s out of work and nobody is expecting him anywhere. 

Dan drops the phone quickly, sure Herbert will hear it. He doesn’t know how to bring it up, so he doesn’t. It gives him a bad feeling, though.

He takes his lunch break at home, and catches a junky red pickup pulling out of the deserted driveway leading up to their house.

The driver is a guy in a loud printed shirt and curly sand-colored hair. He looks familiar, somehow. If Herbert knows him, Dan probably does too. 

Dan waves at him, and the man looks at him warily but just keeps driving. 

“Hey, who was that out in the driveway?” Dan calls when he gets inside, hanging his coat up before he goes to grab leftovers from the fridge.

“Some contractor. Wrong address, obviously.” Herbert’s engrossed in his books. 

Dan laughs. “Hope you didn’t scare him too bad. He looked at me like he was afraid I’d bite.” 

Herbert looks up from his book at that, but the light flashes over his glasses so his eyes still aren't visible. 

“Would you, Dan? You never struck me as a biter.”

“No, I wouldn’t. That’s a very specific psychological profile, isn’t it? I took the same criminal justice unit as you did, you know.” 

“Yes. That class was certainly something.”

\---

That night, Dan wakes up to the unfortunately familiar sound of loud noises from the basement. Some kind of crashing. He grabs the baseball bat he keeps in the corner of his room and drags himself down to check it out.

The basement still has all the operating tables. They lie empty, shining under the dim basement light. Dan sterilized them all, of course.

There’s no new horror to be found in the basement; just Herbert, lying crumpled but breathing halfway down the stairs. Dan sits his ass down on the steps and runs his hands through his hair. 

“Dan! Dan, what are you laughing at? Help me up!”

Dan’s body’s not really cooperating with him, so he lies back and tries to catch his breath. The steps are cutting into his back. 

“What the fuck are you doing down here, Herbert,” Dan says. “I thought I locked this.”

“Well. Science doesn’t wait, you know. It just keeps going, with or without me, and I don’t want to be left behind.”

That’s when Dan sees it. In the far corner, almost far enough to be hidden. 

“How the hell did you get this in here? Herbert, answer me! God damn it, Herbert,” he says, running his mouth and not really giving the man an opportunity to say anything and make Dan believe he hasn’t lost his reason. 

“I needed it, Dan, I needed to keep working, and I knew you wouldn’t give it to me.”

There’s a corpse on a table down there, like there would have been in their prime, when they were working together and it was all still exciting, an air of potential surrounding them. Before the drudgery wore him down. 

Herbert isn’t in a state fit to deal with it alone. 

“To do what?”

“My leg. I told you at dinner, Dan, it hurts. I feel crippled.”

“So, what, you cripple yourself completely? You take a chance on some stranger’s leg?”

“He was the right height. Ernie called, he let me know that a suitable man finally came in.” Herbert’s scrambling to explain himself, like he’s afraid of Dan somehow. 

“Ernie called.” Dan repeats.

“I gave him my number.”

“Just what does he think you’re doing with them, West?” Dan’s hands are swinging all over the place, he can’t stop them. He grabs the staircase rail instead.

“He said something about how this one’s a looker.”

“So he thinks you’re fucking them,” Dan says flatly.

“Not every homosexual is a deviant,” says Herbert. Almost an admission; shocking from someone so obsessed with plausible deniability. 

“ _I_ know that. Does he?”

“Does it matter?”

“Stop changing the subject. I’m not letting you off the hook. What are we doing, here?” Dan’s looking around the basement but his thoughts are on the house above them and the facade of their life. 

“Living together, creating life together, sleeping in separate bedrooms like respectable doctors. Remaining plague-free,” Herbert says, sidestepping the corpse in the room to answer an equally uncomfortable line of discussion.

“Why’d you need a body so badly?”

“I’m telling you the truth.” Herbert’s voice is carefully neutral, a tell that he knows he’s saying something unacceptable. “I was wondering about grafting dead parts onto a live body.”

“Your _leg?_ ” Dan asks, venomous. “It hasn’t even been a month. You haven’t even seen a doctor-- other than me. And this isn’t my field. I just-- is that really the reason?”

Herbert stops responding. 

\--

It’s not a lot of effort to get Herbert down the last few steps. He needs Dan to help him make it down, and being needed again sends a perverse thrill through him. 

It fades, as soon as he has to wrestle Herbert onto a metal table and strap him down to keep him from lunging toward the bonesaw in the metal cabinet. As soon as his foot touches the last step, he staggers forward, clearly as quickly as he’s able, and Dan sees red.

Herbert struggles against it and curses and Dan tries his best to ignore the horrible noise the straps make. He’s just helping out a friend who’s trying to hurt himself. The straps will keep Herbert safe, he thinks to himself firmly as he does them up equally firmly. 

Right when Dan thinks it’s safe to breathe, Herbert cuts him to the core by saying, “You could kiss me right now, you know, and no one would tell.”

“What the fuck,” Dan says, stepping away from the table. He wonders how Herbert can tell he’s thought about kissing him. About fucking him, making him go pink and desperate-- finally, a base need that he can’t will away on his own. He’d need someone else’s attention to really scratch that itch.

“Just let me go.”

“Are you bargaining with me?”

“Yes.”

“What’s your best offer, then?” Dan says, trying for a joke. That’s his first mistake.

“Do you really want to know?”

“No. Herbert, this is crazy. I'm just trying to keep you safe.” He sounds horrible. His throat is sore. 

“Anything you want, you could have.”

“All I want is to keep you safe,” but he can’t meet Herbert’s eyes, because he doesn’t want him to see that Dan wants him.

“You know that this life has a cost.” 

Herbert’s glaring up, brow furrowed and every year of his life clearly visible upon his face as he huffs. The melodrama of it all breaks Dan out of his thoughts and brings him crashing back down to reality. 

“What life, Herbert? Why can’t you put your work down, just for a few hours a week? We’re at home. We should be relaxing. I want to watch television with you and listen to you complain about idiots in the medical field. Not this.”

“That’s not what you want from me.” He sits up as much as he can.“I bring the exceptional. In this house, together, we’ve proven so much already. It’s frustrating to watch you waste your time, Dan.” 

“Waste my time? I spend all day at work helping people, then I come back here and we perform miracles. You need to heal. And you won’t do that by cutting yourself up, just because, because you’re bored.” 

“So you're not above acting like Hill just to get your point across?” Herbert’s chin juts out, like it always did in class, or when he was about to start another argument with an important source of funding.

“Fuck, Herbert. Nothing is easy with you.” Dan slumps into a chair. Herbert should know it’s a raw subject, still. But then, that must be why he says it.

“Let me do what I need to do.”

“I won’t let you hurt yourself.”

“Why’s that, Dan? You didn’t mind leaving me behind, to the carnage and death at the hands of Hill’s remains, back at Miskatonic. But you had something else then, didn’t you?”

“Stop talking, Herbert.”

“Treating me like a delicate little girl won’t bring her back. I’m not Meg.”

“I’d never make that mistake.” Dan makes it halfway up the stairs before he even realizes it. Then he remembers Herbert is still cuffed to the table. Good.

Dan stomps around the kitchen, hoping Herbert hears him down below in his little sanctuary. He makes a pot of coffee. He makes eggs and toast for himself, even though it’s 3 a.m.. He has a leisurely meal and burns his mouth on the eggs so he can’t taste any of it. He stares into the distance for a long time, letting ambient fog fill his brain. No thoughts are safe, so Dan keeps them all at bay with mindless activity. 

He shuts the books Herbert leaves open around the living room, trying to get the room to look presentable. It still looks awful and dusty, covered in hideous upholstery and wallpaper thick with years of grime. The kitchen, small as it is, is a nicer place to sit and brood. 

Normally, when Herbert pulls something so annoying and destructive, Dan tries to leave. Each time, he thinks he may as well cut his losses and see if he can find someone _normal_ to obsess over and devote himself to. He’s never felt anyone else be so sickly magnetic. 

He loved Meg, but he never wanted to spend his life doing whatever she told him to do. Francesca was beautiful, and there for the taking. Dan barely had to put in any work on her. Gloria was ill, and required no commitment. None of them ever asked him to _do_ anything, except stop conducting illegal research. And, well, he was never going to stop _that_.

The sun is coming up, and he catches sight of himself on the reflective surface of the kettle. He looks old. Herbert is _aging_ him. Dan calls in sick, because he hasn’t had a sick day in months. Something feels on the verge of collapse in his life, and it has for a while.

When he goes back down, Herbert’s scrambling to get upright on the slippery metal, his shirt a mess and his hair is damp with sweat. 

“Danny, for God’s sake.” 

“Herbert. Shut up, okay? I’m sorry. But I’m not letting you hurt yourself like this. What else can I do for you? Anything else.”

“I don’t know.”

“Your reagent? Christ, there has to be something.”

“You’d do _that_?” Herbert looks awful, almost like he did that first night after the disaster. There are shadows under his eyes in the fluorescent light and his glasses are smeared with grease. 

“I don’t want you to do anything worse to yourself.”

“It’s not so bad, Danny. It’s diluted, hardly enough to be dangerous.”

“Oh, should I try it then?” His glare is hard, the product of almost two years of listening to Herbert brush things off as _not dangerous._ “Don’t lie to me, Herbert. I already _said_ I’d do it.”

“In the metal cabinet. There are clean needles in there, in the black bag.”

Dan throws the doors open, moving sleepless, zombielike. He finds the glowing green bottle and pulls out a syringe. The movement is rote; he received his first injection training more than half a decade ago, now. He draws the damned liquid into the syringe, pushes out the air bubble so that just a drop is expelled from the tip. He even remembered the dosage from last time.

Most people shy away when you approach them with a big needle like that. Dan is used to having to comfort patients, having to tell people it’s not as bad as it looks. Not Herbert; his eyes are big and shiny with excitement. He licks his lips and shifts around on the metal table.

Herbert is trembling before him, already looking strung out. It’s a terrible sight, but better than the alternative. Dan can’t stop him from self-destructing. This is the best he can do, he thinks.

He’s already rolling up his shirtsleeves, and Dan finds a vein. His hand looks huge on that scrawny arm. He doesn’t count down, just sticks it in, and Herbert outright moans as he does. It’s strange to hear him like that. The man always does his best to act like he’s made of stone.

“Are you alright?” Dan asks, before he can stop himself. Herbert nods, a flush in his cheeks. He’s biting his lip. It’s upsetting to see him like this, looking on the verge of coming in his pants. 

Dan depresses the plunger on the syringe, thinking bitterly that this is the most sexual interest in anything he’s ever seen Herbert express.

“Okay. All done.”

Herbert looks up at him, and his expression’s not much changed from the awed look he had for the reagent-filled syringe. He looks like he did that first night in the old basement, with the cat dangling from his back. So new, and exciting, and dangerous for more than just scientific reasons. Herbert brings something out in him.

“You wanted me to kiss you?” Dan blurts.

Herbert, newly invigorated and thrumming from the toxic green sludge in his veins, flexing his wrists, goes, “What?”

“You were babbling before. But it’s fine.” Dan runs a hand over the back of his neck and starts to back away. 

“Come back.” Herbert’s grip on his wrist is firm and his eyes are focused. “What did I say?”

“You acted like I was tying you down to ravish you.”

“Wishful thinking, I guess.” He looks sheepish, which is strange and new.

“You’re not funny.”

“Dan, would I joke about something like this? Would I joke, period?” And he’s smiling, something broader than the pinched smirk Dan sees him direct at objects of derision.

“Is it the drugs? Christ, I can’t believe I did that.”

“It’s the best thing you’ve ever done for me,” he says, brown eyes blazing. “I feel almost like myself again.”

“Herbert...”

“I don’t want you to regret this, Dan. Be proud, you made the right decision.” It’s such obvious coaxing. 

“I know when I’m being condescended to.” 

“I can’t have your guilt ruining this moment.” He places his hands firmly, deliberately on Dan’s shoulders. “I want you to know that I appreciate you, Dan. My work... would not be as successful without you.” The words come slowly and deliberately out of his mouth. One hand creeps up under Dan’s chin, tilts it down so he’s closer. Dan allows himself to bask in the near-feverish heat of Herbert’s touch for a few moments. 

But since he’s Dan Cain, buzzkill by occupation, he breaks the moment first.

“I need to go to bed. And you need to eat something.”

\----

Herbert sits perched on the arm of the couch, catlike, right next to Dan. The television is on, and Herbert’s nibbling at a piece of toast. 

Herbert’s hand is on the back of Dan’s neck, nails long enough to scrape.

“Is this what you had in mind?”

“Sure. Something like it.” Dan swallows and the sound is probably audible. Herbert’s hand stills, but doesn’t leave him. 

“Is there something you want?” he asks. “What is this?”

Herbert stares. “I thought this was part of it. You know, the whole fantasy you spun.”

Oh.

“I can’t really-- can’t really talk about it. But come here.”

Dan pulls Herbert into his lap. Herbert waits silently, and Dan would think of it as doll-like if that weren’t a dangerous, insulting assumption to make about Herbert.

Dan brushes hair away from his face, smooths out his shirt. Herbert doesn’t seem to have much of any kind of stubble, even though his hair has been allowed to grow out almost down to his collar in the past weeks cooped up in the house.

“I do want to try this,” Dan says quietly. “Can I?”

“Go ahead.”

He leans forward and kisses Herbert on the mouth, as softly as he knows how. Herbert lets him control it, at first, stays still under his arms. But then he leans in, kisses back furiously. He’s pushing Dan back against the couch. 

Dan squirms, trying to adjust to the shift in power. He’s never had a girl do this to him. Herbert’s hands are almost gentle as he unbuttons Dan’s shirt and pulls it open. And he _has_ done this before, come to think of it: in Peru, with Dan’s injury. He hopes they can enjoy it this time. 

Reverent hands trace over Dan’s bare flesh, and the touch is not remotely clinical. It’s searching, covering every inch of exposed skin. His hands come to rest at the buttons on Dan’s jeans, but they stop there. 

Dan knows that trick, so he reaches down himself to open his fly. Herbert’s been mostly quiet this whole time; no cutting remarks about anything. 

Herbert’s head is in Dan’s lap suddenly, though not on his dick. Just licking and nipping the skin on his hips and thighs. Dan’s moaning, embarrassingly and out of his control. 

Herbert sits up a little to look smug and also to take his glasses off, a surprising move. 

When his mouth _does_ come down to cover the sensitive head of his dick, Dan’s caught off guard but doesn’t make a sound. He wants to hear Herbert’s sounds, instead, all kinds of undignified, porny slurping. And a hint of a groan, something that comes from deep in his fucking diaphragm and Dan can _feel_ the reverberations from it.

He leans his head back, eyes squeezed shut and a hand buried in Herbert’s hair.

Herbert is swallowing him down, and the pressure from his mouth and his tongue and his lips is almost cruel. 

“Okay, Herbert,” Dan warns. Keep it short, so no one can hear how fucked he is. He’s rewarded with more intense suction.

Brown eyes meet his, an eyebrow raised, smug and controlling even while sucking dick on his hands and knees.

“I’m almost there,” he warns again, with the last of his strength before Herbert traces a hand up the inside of his thigh to grab the base of his dick, and he’s coming, right in his smart mouth.

There’s a funny twist to his mouth when Herbert surfaces and climbs back up Dan to get up close and personal to him. There’s a thin string of cum on his chin, and he seems to realize, because he brings up the back of his hand to scrub it away-- but Dan catches his hand before he can do that. 

“I just need a minute longer to commit this to memory,” he says hoarsely.

“Disgusting,” Herbert responds, but he doesn’t sound disgusted. “Can we go upstairs now?” 

\----

Herbert doesn’t go for being stripped down, and he’s still in undershirt and boxers. It’s kind of sexy in its own way. He lets Dan lift the hem of his shirt and kiss wetly halfway up his torso before he tugs the shirt back down. He doesn’t seem to want any reciprocation, and pushes Dan’s hands away when he tries.

“Lie back, Dan. Let me look at you.” Herbert says it with such authority, Dan obliges.

“What happens when I don’t give you what you want?” Dan murmurs, low. 

Herbert bites his collar bone and says, “Do you really want to find out?”

Dan laughs, and eventually so does Herbert. They settle into the sheets, pristine white among dingy gray wallpaper and bullet holes in the flooring. 

**Author's Note:**

> (they’ll deal with the corpse later, shhh)
> 
> this is technically the first reanimator fic i started writing, but it took me a while to decide what to do with it.  
> thanks for following me on my journey to obsession with an 80s horror series! i hope you enjoyed it.


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